The Concluding Chapter of Doctor Who’s Trilogy of Tragedy.

With both previous encounters having ended in genocide, the Silurians and Sea Devils decide to strike back and wouldn’t you know it, the Doctor’s just happens to be there, but it’s a case of new face, same disgrace as events spiral out of control once again…

The sight of a pantomime horse-style monster awkwardly bumping into a painted plywood bulkhead is a common if unfair summary of Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep, the serial which opened Doctor Who’s twenty-first season in 1984. A cold war technothriller and ecological Greek tragedy, Johnny Byrne’s smart script would fall victim to the cruel vagaries of production schedules, waiting another forty-two years before it could be appreciated for its potential rather than its pitfalls.

In the year 2084, the TARDIS materialises aboard Sea Base 4, a strategic underwater installation positioned in the North Sea during a period of global tension. The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding), and Turlough (Mark Strickson) are immediately mistaken for enemy spies by the base commander, Vorshak (Tom Adams), and his senior officers, including the sinister Nilson (Ian McCulloch) and Dr Solow (Ingrid Pitt). But as the human crew prepares for a potential nuclear launch, a far older threat emerges from the ocean floor as the Silurians and Sea Devils launch a coordinated assault to seize Sea Base 4’s arsenal for their own ends.

For all its promise, Warriors Of The Deep has long underwhelmed due to production problems which manifest in almost every scene. With a cut-price Space 1999 set and a Silurian ship that looks like a borrowed prop from Stingray there’s more than a whiff of Gerry Anderson about Season 21’s opener, and not just in the stiff and awkward way many of the cast move around or how on-point everyone’s eyeshadow game is. There’s a sloppiness to the execution exemplified by scenes where security guards (cosplaying as Dr No in his radiation suit) frequently walk right past extremely suspicious events – including at one point a body stripped to their underwear – just lying in the corridors in plain sight.

These failings weren’t lapses in taste or competence but the direct consequence of a production schedule derailed not by interspecies geopolitics but the whims of domestic politics. The decision to call the 1983 general election forced the BBC to requisition Television Centre studio space for political broadcasts, effectively lopping weeks off the serial’s preparation and filming time. The cast and crew were deprived of rehearsal time and director Pennant Roberts was compelled to shoot the serial without the pre time to properly plan shots. Action sequences are clumsy and perfunctory, dialogue is frequently stilted and performances vary wildly as the cast struggled with a schedule which frequently permitted only a single take before they had to move on. It’s a story that would have benefited from a sense of shadowy foreboding however the interior of the deep-sea base is bathed in blinding white light, which – given the whiteness of the sets – gives the impression of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude rather than a secret military installation on the seabed, something the excellent model work at least attempts to convey.

Davison seems thoroughly reinvigorated by the role of the Doctor, springing off the back of the celebratory The Five Doctors and into action in Warriors Of The Deep. A hitherto underexplored facet of the Fifth Doctor that will manifest again and again in his final season is his capacity for action. This is a Doctor who’s more assertive than before, taking the fight to the guards and, when the need arises, the Silurians, Sea Devils and the Myrka. One wonders is the episode one ending tumble over the railing brought back any trauma from the Fourth Doctor’s regenerative plunge from the Pharos array. The Doctor hasn’t been this pro-active since the Third Doctor practiced his Venusian Aikido at every opportunity. Davison’s performance is the vital element that powers Warriors Of The Deep, portraying a man whose patience with humanity’s violent impulses is finally beginning to fracture under the weight of his own guilt; no longer the whimsical bohemian of previous years; he is a frantic diplomat failing to keep the peace in a room full of people itching for an apocalypse.

While nothing can mitigate all of the misfortunes that befell the serial, the 2026 Special Edition, released as part of The Collection: Season 21, achieves – through the application of CGI and judicious editing – a remarkable and perhaps best ever restoration and rehabilitation of the story. Most significantly, the Myrka – a creature so poorly and hastily realised in 1984 that the paint on the glorified pantomime horse was still wet when it hit the studio floor – is entirely reimagined. The new CGI-enhanced beast is a lower-slung, projectile tongued predator that moves with a speed and menace that was physically impossible for the two men in a felt suit to achieve in the original broadcast. Even Ingrid Pitt’s infamous karate encounter with the Myrka is retained, albeit with just enough digital chicanery to polish its camp absurdity. Other changes are more subtle but no less impactful. The Silurian’s forehead lights no longer flash Dalek-style in time with their speech and said speech is much more economical, reducing repetition and giving their remaining dialogue more weight.

What remains allows for the compelling nature of Warriors of the Deep to shine through: its unrelenting bleakness. Find himself once again standing between the Silurians, Sea Devils and human annihilation, The Doctor finds himself forced once again into a pyrrhic victory, completing his hattrick of genocide as he wipes out the reptilian invaders through the use of poisonous Hexachromite gas. The final image of the Doctor standing amongst the corpses of friends and foes alike, lamenting that “there should have been another way,” captures the essence of the Fifth Doctor’s tenure: the tragedy of a man of peace who cannot save everyone from themselves.

In either version, Warriors Of The Deep is a good story but the latest edition allows the story’s high-concept moral questions to breathe without the distraction of a failing costume. It remains a work that feels like it was put together in a state of controlled panic, reflecting the real-world pressures of the BBC in 1984 just as much as it reflects the fictional pressures of a nuclear standoff and gets the Fifth Doctor’s final season off to a rousing start.